


seeing stars

by TheGoodDoctor



Category: Red Dwarf (UK TV)
Genre: @ grant & naylor keep the kids u cowards, Angst, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship, i demand standard shenanigans with two small children, refusal to acknowledge the fate of the twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29156937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoodDoctor/pseuds/TheGoodDoctor
Summary: spark:noun; a small fiery particle thrown off from a fire, alight in ashes, or produced by striking together two hard surfaces such as stone or metalnoun; a small amount of a quality or intense feeling“Morning, Listy,” Rimmer says quietly.Lister pouts in the vague direction of the digital numbers and their truly depressing read-out of 03:43. “Mornings,” he proclaims in a voice that sounds like crushed gravel, “were a mistake.”
Relationships: Dave Lister/Arnold Rimmer
Comments: 16
Kudos: 32





	seeing stars

**Author's Note:**

> a companion of sorts to [pins and needles.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28568649)
> 
> sevensilvermagpies: "[the crew should] have more time with the babies THEY DESERVED BETTER"  
> me: "u right they DID deserve more time with the kids"  
> me:  
> me: oh wait i can make that happen
> 
> this fic goes with hymn to her by kt tunstall

A little wet cough of not-yet-crying echoes against the submarine grey metal walls and burrows like a brain-eating weevil through the thick, comforting fog of exhaustion blanketing Lister’s conscious mind. It finds the primordial, parental soft bit at the back, hidden behind Lister’s selective deafness switch and covered in the thin parachute material of his commitment-phobia; the noise pushes these obstructions aside, crushing the phobia under one onesied foot, and gives the parental instinct a swift kicking.

Lister startles awake with such panicked suddenness that he almost launches himself out of his bunk entirely.

Sparing a moment to blink blearily and get his head around a couple of key facts (where is he, who is he, why is he, and does he still have to be worried about the teletubby with Kryten’s voice which was chasing him around the ship or can his brain stop waving that image nervously in front of his inner eye now), Lister stares blankly at a drool patch on his pillow and waits for the world to shuffle itself into some kind of comprehensible format. The _Dwarf_ is quiet, barring the usual clanking, grumbling and groaning that the old girl emits just to let everyone know that she’s making an effort despite being very aged; Lister can’t quite work out what he’s woken himself up for, accustomed as he is to such venerable mumbling.

The noise, still lodged in his hindbrain, kicks the parent point again.

 _It’s stopped, now,_ his ears whinge. _It’s fine._ In solidarity, his eyes droop; his face goes slack; his muscles unionise and go on strike, refusing to hold his head up until they get a shorter working day.

The parental instinct eyes the selective hearing switch suspiciously and takes advantage of the brain’s inattention to get behind the wheel, permitting only an exhausted groan before hauling Lister’s limbs out of bed and down the ladder.

Lister trudges across the bunk room, thick bed socks sliding down his feet and creating strange woolly flippers. In passing, he grabs a jacket from the hook by the door without consulting any higher brain function in order to check that it was one he himself owned; instead, he simply swings it absently around his shoulders and continues the half-asleep trudge to the small cupboard-like room next door.

He stops in the doorway. Blinks. Makes an effort, and actually wakes up.

With the restoration of some basic intelligence independent of the parent-panic-point, Lister realises that the room is already pleasantly dimly-lit; light enough to see with some clarity, but not so bright as to be offensive to sleepy eyes. Secondly, both twins are awake but neither are crying, which feels somewhat miraculous. He’s honestly not sure he can remember another incident like it in their seven weeks of existence. Bexley has most of one fist and the corner of his blanket stuffed in his mouth, large solemn eyes fixed on a point above him, whereas Jim is kicking his little legs like a frog at a disco and beaming. Lister feels the corner of his own mouth tick up in solidarity with his beautiful little boy. Third realisation of interest: the kids aren’t crying, but the room isn’t silent. There’s quiet murmuring, low and soothing - slightly melodic, but not a song as far as Lister can tell. At least, he doesn’t know any songs that run _please don’t wake your dad, he is very tired._ His ears point out, about a minute too late, that he’d heard the murmuring on the way into the room, too, but this doesn’t really help Lister parse what, exactly, is going on.

Because it’s coming from - realisation four - Rimmer, who is sitting at the foot of the cot and talking very gently to Lister’s sons and wiggling his fingers for Jim to grab at. He’s allowed his projection to get slightly out-of-phase with reality around the fingertips in a way which he usually hates, but it makes tiny blue sparks flicker from his hands and Jim is reaching for those, Lister thinks, more than he is for the hand itself. They reflect in Bexley’s pupils like starbursts, an entire constellation of wonder. And Rimmer is smiling, really smiling - not like he does when he can’t think of a comeback, or when he’s being a smug git, or when he’s found something worthy of mockery, but actually just smiling. Like he’s happy. Lister doesn’t think he’s seen that before.

Bit of a fucking worry, that.

Rimmer catches sight of him and turns his way. The smile vanishes from sight, squirrelled away behind a more neutral expression, and Lister feels a sudden punch of disappointment. Rimmer’s fingers, however, continue to flick sparks about even as Jim reaches up and through them. Rimmer glances at the small clock in the corner, installed so that Lister could get an accurate gripe on about his sleepless nights, and then offers Lister a raised eyebrow. “Morning, Listy,” he says quietly.

Lister pouts in the vague direction of the digital numbers and their truly depressing read-out of 03:43. “Mornings,” he proclaims in a voice that sounds like crushed gravel, “were a mistake.”

Rimmer pauses for a moment to swallow and blink, but Lister’s brain is working at a rather severe lag; if he had noticed it at all, he would have dismissed it as Rimmer suffering similarly. Then Rimmer raises a superior eyebrow. “Taking against the concept of time, now? Besides, you’ve never given mornings a chance; I could count the sunrises you’ve seen on a drunk lumberjack’s limbs.”

Lister makes a face and slumps beside Rimmer on the bench. “Was right, though. I’m giving mornings zero stars, minus points, would not recommend to a friend.”

Jim looks his way when he speaks, offering his dad a quick grin before going back to grabbing at sparkles; Bexley, though, removes both hand and blanket from his mouth to better show off a mighty lip wobble, and no amount of Rimmer’s glittery fingers will stop this sad noise from developing into a full wail.

“Aw, no, love, it’s alright, Daddy’s here,” Lister croons, the words emerging from some deep, instinctual place. He leans forward and strokes gently at Bexley’s cheek; as expected, he turns his head to mouth at the finger insistently.

“Sorry,” Rimmer says awkwardly, “he’s hungry. I was going to get Kryten so you could sleep, but-”

“Nah, it’s alright,” Lister says, scooping Bexley into his arms and giving in to the urge to kiss his chubby cheek a few times even with the wailing in his ear. “I don’t mind it.”

“Yes, you do,” Rimmer corrects, not unfairly, as Lister fishes a bottle of formula from the box opposite them and shakes it a bit. The room really is tiny - about the size of a large airing cupboard, because that’s technically what it is. The advantage of this, however, is that it’s the warmest space on the _Dwarf_ , with the ship’s hot water and heating pipes snaking around the walls, and it keeps the pre-prepared formula at the right temperature if they tuck the box just behind the main water pipe. “You hate getting up in the night.”

“Yeah, I do,” Lister concedes, leaning back and revelling in the blessed quiet as Bexley enjoys the fruits of his loudness. “But I like sitting with them. I do,” he tells Bexley, in a gooey voice that makes Rimmer wrinkle his nose. “An’ - you know. I’m not gonna be their dad forever. Gonna get big and strong, aren’t you, Bex? Go on midnight raids to the kitchen by yourself without your dear old dad.”

“That I very much doubt,” Rimmer says, eyes fixed very deliberately on Jim and his sparkling fingers as if he cannot look at Lister; perhaps Ionian culture has taken the old breastfeeding taboo - long since out of date on Earth - and doubled down to take against feeding children altogether. Lister shifts bloody-mindedly, pushing his elbow into Rimmer’s side in an effort to draw his attention regardless - it is, of course, no use. His elbow simply phases through Rimmer’s ribs without impact, but he feels a little better for trying. “If these children grow up to be anything like you - an event which seems both unfortunate and inevitable - then they’ll either spend the entire night and much of the day asleep, or they’ll take you with them.”

“Oh yeah?” Lister says around a massive yawn. “You reckon I’ll be a cool dad, then?”

Rimmer’s eyes flick to him briefly, heavily laden with his usual general disapproval. “If you consider being a bad influence _cool_ , Listy - and you probably do - you couldn’t be cooler if you were Ötzi the neolithic iceman.”

Lister offers him a toothy grin. “Cheers, man. You, Rimmer - and I mean this with all the respect in the world - will be the least cool person my sons ever know.”

Rimmer turns and treats him to the most delighted glare Lister has ever been on the receiving end of. His brows are determined to declare indignation and fury, but this is losing out to the twisted, much-smothered grin persisting despite Rimmer’s best efforts. His eyes are sparkling with amusement and no small amount of pride, and Lister suddenly sees with perfect clarity where Jim gets it from: he could sit and stare at Rimmer sparkling for hours, too.

He is saved from this particular revelation by Bexley yawning around his empty bottle, giving him the perfect excuse to stop gazing into Rimmer’s eyes like some sleep-deprived, soppy romance heroine and instead swing his son up onto one shoulder and rub soothing circles into his back. “You gonna sleep now?” he asks Bexley. He babbles incoherently in response and hiccups. “Cat reckons youse’re gonna be ready for your first outfitting tomorrow. Big day, eh?”

“Is that a good idea?” Rimmer asks hesitantly, and Lister shrugs.

“Probably not. The Cat needs adult supervision at the best of times. Hopefully he’ll get bored of it until they’re a bit older when they start crying into his silk ties, but I’ll never hear the end of it if I don’t let him try.” Lister leans back against the wall, craning his neck to look Bexley in the face. His son smiles beatifically at him, a beam which could launch ships and end wars, and then pokes him in the eye in an attempt to grab his nose. “Was gonna load Kryten up with dire warnings and have a nap - not much more I can do,” he says, rather nasally.

“I’ll keep an eye, if you like.”

Rimmer’s still watching Jim, when Lister turns to check he didn’t dream that - with slightly suspicious intensity, if you ask Lister. His ears have gone a little pink and his shoulders are stiff and slightly hunched, too, in the half-darkness; something he has taken to doing whenever an action of his might be interpreted as _kind._ He does this: goes all funny and defensive and embarrassed and cross every time he does something nice for the kids and Lister dares to notice it, like Lister might mock him relentlessly rather than - what is more likely - fall at his feet and weep in exhausted gratitude. The other week he’d caught Rimmer teaching a scutter how to tuck a small blue blanket very, very gently around a bundle of socks the approximate size of a six-week-old baby and the man had been so agitated and furious about it that he had avoided Lister and twins all for a whole day. It had been as though Lister would have yelled at him for even thinking of interacting with the kids, when in reality if Rimmer had hands with which to hold things Lister’s first action would be to shove both kids into his arms and go for a lie down. They could share night feeds - could make a rota, and Lister would even let Rimmer colour-code it with his stupid watercolours and pin it to the wall, and - and Rimmer keeps acting as though too much gentleness will earn him a black eye.

Lister reflects, not for the first time, that Rimmer has more neuroses than a toy poodle with a stupid haircut and no bodily autonomy. Vicious nervy bastard.

“That’d be grand, yeah,” he says instead of voicing any of that. He makes an effort to keep his voice low and calm, like it’s no big deal either way, and watches a little of the tension loosen out of Rimmer’s shoulders. “Won’t you be tired, though?” He nods at the light show he’s putting on for Jim. “Up all night being a disco ball, and all.”

“Technically,” Rimmer sniffs, ignoring that last comment, “holograms don’t _need_ sleep the same way you living do.”

“Yeah, but you _do_ sleep anyway.”

Rimmer shrugs. “Sod all else to do around here.” Lister nods in concession. Sure, he hasn’t slept for more than three hours at a time in about seven weeks, but at least running around after the kids is something to do. Beats staring aimlessly out of the window, at one patch of stars that looks so very much like another.

Bexley yawns massively and burps like a champion. Lister laughs at Bexley’s self-satisfied lip-smack, little eyes wrinkling up in sleepy delight, and at Rimmer’s expression of absolute disgust. “He really is you through and through, isn’t he,” Rimmer says through his pinched look of disapprobation.

“Oh, take that lemon out your mouth,” Lister grins, lifting Bexley to press kisses to his fat little cheeks. Jim, filled with sudden and terrible sibling envy, decides that it’s his turn to be fed and cuddled and opens his mouth to scream. “Reckon Jim takes after you, though,” Lister says absently, wincing at the noise, and shifts Bexley in his arms to hold him out to Rimmer. “Here, d’ya wanna take him for a bit?”

There is a pause, and then - “Lister, I - I can’t.”

_Fuck._

Lister screws his face up, cursing himself, his family, the world, and whatever it was that made him flexible enough to put his whole foot and much of his ankle in his mouth. “Smeg - yeah. Right. Fuck, Rimmer, I’m so sorry, I didn’t - think. Sorry.” He switches quickly to laying Bexley in the crib and scooping up Jim, face burning. _Of course he can’t, you smegging idiot,_ his brain reprimands him enthusiastically as he collects Jim’s bottle, _he’s a bloody hologram. What did you think he was, lazy? Allergic to small children? A massive fan of yelling at scutters - alright, he might be that and all. But - really? You forgot? He’s trying to help and you just_ had _to remind him that he’s dead, and he can’t. Good smegging work, Listy, really stellar._

Lister keeps his eyes on Jim, watching his big dark eyes in single-minded focus on the consumption of food. It’s easier than looking at Rimmer. They sit in stifling, cloying silence, pressing in around them like steam in a sauna, and Lister reflects that he’s not been this embarrassed since he was a kid, and never even half so embarrassed around Rimmer; Lister has very little shame, all things considered, but he isn’t - he’s not - 

He’ll be a dick to Rimmer until the cows come home, but he’d never meant to be cruel.

He sighs. “God, I’m a goit,” he mutters, scrubbing a hand down his face. If only he were more awake - then he wouldn’t have rubbed Rimmer’s face in it like that, wouldn’t be feeling quite so unsettlingly emotional about it, wouldn’t want quite so badly to take Rimmer’s face in his hands and show him just how sorry he is. Lister’s just so bloody tired and in terrible want of a co-parent, is all; he’s watched too much telly with happy families and two parents who love each other more than life itself. Those picture-perfect bastards never look like they’ve been up for forty hours on the trot. They all look like Rimmer: calm and gentle in soft half-light, leaning over the cot so’s Bexley doesn’t feel lonely as he slowly drifts off to sleep, all steady and dependable. His hair, in deference to his sleepless state, is artfully dishevelled and free of its usual gel, but he is no more unravelled than this. Lister wants to get his hands in it and hold, to see if the curls wrap as neatly around his fingers as he thinks they ought to, to keep Rimmer still long enough to ask him to stay.

Rimmer turns, then, and looks at him; his face becomes half shadowed, half bronzed in the lamplight like an ancient theatre mask, and the distortion makes it difficult to see Rimmer’s expression at seeing Lister watching him. “I don’t mind,” he says, very quietly.

Lister replays the conversation, shifting Jim in his elbow as he thinks. “That I’m a goit?” he replies, frowning.

“That-” Rimmer swallows. “That you asked,” he says, carefully. His face shifts like he’s passing the thought from one side of his face to the other, trying it on for size; eventually, he settles on a kind of nervous determination and pins Lister with it. “I would rather that you - forgot. That I’m dead.”

Lister’s mouth has gone oddly dry; he has to swallow hard to make any noise at all and his voice, when it hesitantly emerges, is gravelly and barely more than a whisper. “But - you don’t want to be reminded, do you? It must - hurt.”

Rimmer’s eyes, in the gloom, are dark and weirdly entrancing. Lister seems drawn inexorably to them, and to the golden glint shining star-like against the deep, deep darkness. “Yes,” he says, equally quiet. “Of course. But - if you forget, then it means…” Rimmer blinks and looks down at his hands, and Lister realises that his fingers are all twisted up in one another. Lister wants to reach out and pull them apart, hold those long digits more gently for him, but he’s got an armful of baby and - well. “It means you don’t think of me as dead,” Rimmer says awkwardly. “I mean, you _know,_ obviously, but it’s not the first thing you - You treat me like anyone else. It’s - nice.”

Lister’s mouth ticks up in a sorry little smile. He’s so abruptly, terribly sad for Rimmer and his half-a-hundred neuroses and fears; imagine being as alone in the universe as they are, and so used to bullying that you’re worried about workplace discrimination. “‘S alright, Rimmer,” he says gently. “To me, you’ll always be a smeghead first, and a dead one second.”

“Thank you, Listy, you irrepressible moron,” Rimmer says dryly, but the dim light catches on his smile as he turns back to the cot.

Jim finishes his bottle and Lister hauls him up onto his shoulder, slumping sideways into the broad, foam-covered hot water pipe standing vertically between him and Rimmer. It’s pleasantly warm and slightly soft, like leaning into the body of another human being, and between that and the gentle circles he’s rubbing into Jim’s back Lister appears to be soothing himself to sleep. He yawns massively, bringing a hand up to cover it entirely too late. “Shame you can’t hold stuff,” he says inanely.

“An intelligent thought, well expressed,” Rimmer retorts, leaning back against the wall himself. “No understatement there.”

“Mm,” Lister agrees and hears Rimmer in irritated amusement. “Then we could go to bed.”

Rimmer chokes on air and Lister, after a moment of bewilderment, winces at his own wording. “Excuse me?” Rimmer says, several octaves above his usual tone.

“Separately,” Lister corrects firmly, closing his eyes in the vague hope that reducing visual input would improve verbal output. “Because we could each feed one twin and go to sleep. Or, you could do all the night feeds since you don’t _need_ sleep, and I could get some shut-eye.”

“We’d take turns,” Rimmer says firmly, and Lister grins at the predictable rota-ised _Rimmer_ -ness of it all. “But - you’d let me?”

Lister opens his eyes. Rimmer’s fingers are all tangled up again, he notes; his face, too, is screwed up in an expression of nervous agitation. “‘Course, Rimmer,” he says gently, overcome with some kind of weird, stupid, furious affection. Someone, somewhere, somewhen, really did a number on Rimmer. Lister wants _words_ with ‘em. “Why not?”

Rimmer’s eyes widen the way they once had when he had asked Todhunter for more responsibility and then, to his great horror, actually got some. “Because - because I’m not qualified!” he sputters in a panic. “I wouldn’t know how-”

“Neither do I, Rimmer. And it’s scary, but that’s what being a parent is,” Lister says, pressing his face into Jim’s neck to soothe the nerves that always arise when he’s very tired, or the kids won’t stop crying, or he has to take them to the medibay for a check-up with Kryten. A tiny errant hand smacks his cheekbone; this makes him feel much better.

“But you’re - I mean, biologically…” Rimmer says, waving his hands in a vague and incomprehensible gesture that Lister’s tired eyes cannot even follow, let alone parse.

“Rimmer,” he says, gentle but firm as Rimmer’s eyes flick nervously to his own, “of the two of us, one had a happy relationship with all members of his adopted family for as long as they all did live, and the other divorced his biological parents at fourteen and has been compulsively lying to them ever since. I don’t think shared genes gives you arcane knowledge of _how to be a dad_.”

Rimmer sniffs. “Shame,” he mutters mulishly and not, perhaps, unreasonably.

Jim wriggles against his chest and bestows upon them all a very quiet and delicate burp. Lister kisses his cheek and shuffles forward to lay him beside his brother. “Oh, yeah, you take after Rimmer alright,” he tells him; Jim beams and giggles with apparent delight. “I see how it is,” Lister mock-grouses. “Just wait until you grow up - he’ll be a nightmare, promise.”

Rimmer, when he turns to check, has a smile more fragile than cut glass and twice as pretty. Or, not pretty - whatever adjective it is that one man might use to describe the rare and oddly entrancing genuine smile of another man in a way that is not sleep-deprived and _is_ most assuredly platonic. Lister is lazy and will, for now, settle with pretty; but let it be known, universe, that this is a placeholder descriptor. He’s got too much going on, right now, to also deal with being actually definitely in love with Rimmer. That can wait until the kids are at least eighteen. “Can I?” Rimmer asks, hope dawning in his voice and warming Lister through and through.

“Be a nightmare? You may not,” Lister says happily and grins at Rimmer, whose smile solidifies into something far sturdier. “But be around when they’re grown up? You don’t have a choice, man: you’re a - an uncle, now.” Rimmer beams and Lister swallows the _dad_ which he had almost said instead. Asking someone to co-parent is a big step, after all, when you’ve not been on a date and, in fact, rarely even said nice things to one another.

Rimmer leans forward and slowly, with plenty of time for Lister to stop him should he wish to, reaches out to stroke one long finger down Jim’s soft cheek. “Uncle Arnold,” he sing-songs gently and with no small amount of pride.

Lister rolls his eyes. “You can be Uncle Rimmer, an’ that’s your lot - I’m not switching to _Arnold_ now.”

Rimmer swats this away, entirely focussed on fussing over Jim. It takes extra attention, Lister notices: without the tactile feedback, Rimmer is having to be extremely careful to neither miss, nor trail his fingers _through_ Jim. But he’s trying so very hard, and Lister sees that he must want this very badly indeed, and then he has a bad idea. And follows through, because he’s - what was it? - an irrepressible moron.

He moves forward and pushes his hand through Rimmer’s, matching the positions of their fingers as well as he can. Rimmer recoils and starts to draw back, but Lister puts his other hand out. “Don’t - wait. Look.”

He lines their hands up again, wearing Rimmer’s wrist like an ill-fitting glove. His whole arm is starting to go dead, sparkling all over with pins and needles, but when Rimmer hesitantly moves his hand forward Lister follows the movement as best as he can. Carefully, they both reach out; Lister’s arm is entirely numb; his/Rimmer’s/their finger traces the curve of Jim’s cheek. It looks like Rimmer’s arm, his own completely hidden within, and Rimmer breathes out very slowly, a little shakily.

Jim yawns, stretches, reaches out - and curls his little instinctive fist around the finger that is Lister’s, but which looks like it is Rimmer’s.

“Oh,” Rimmer says, all soft and surprised, and Lister nearly laughs. He feels as though he cannot contain his own self; as though he might float out of himself and coil his incorporeal form around Rimmer, as though he ought really to be hovering gently about a foot above the floor and glowing slightly, as though the dim nightlights ought to become haloes and render them chiaroscuro like a baroque oil painting of the nativity. He should be allowed to live in this moment forever.

Unfortunately for this plan, his arm is not the only thing going to sleep; after his head has dipped and jerked upright twice and Jim has relaxed his grip and closed his eyes, Rimmer slowly withdraws. Lister slumps back against the wall, the act of keeping his eyes open occupying the solid majority of his brain processing power, and rests in the lull that endures. They don’t talk about it: about the little epiphany _oh_ and the burning behind Lister’s tear ducts which he is ruthlessly suppressing and the yo-yoing of Rimmer’s adam’s apple as he swallows hard to do likewise. What is there to say? Everything, right now, makes perfect sense in a way which it won’t, probably, when they eventually have to leave the perfectly isolated warmth of their little gloomy bubble. For now, though, Lister is so tired and drained that if he stands up he’ll see stars and maybe pass out - _but_ \- the kids are asleep and Rimmer is here and the soft red-gold light of the lamps is gentle with them all. It shines on the walls and pipes like a sunset and perhaps _Red Dwarf_ is beautiful; it falls tenderly over the children and limns Rimmer’s profile, making him striking and steady and softened around the edges; and Lister could weep, for he is so very nearly perfectly happy.

The pipes sparkle golden-bright and they reflect in Rimmer’s eyes like constellations of stars: brilliant and distant and untouchable. Rather than see these stars, Lister closes his eyes. Has he not earned a little dreaming?

“Lister?” Rimmer is saying, gentle and a little concerned, but Lister simply allows it to happen. He slumps sideways on the bench, wrapped up in the jacket which he has slowly come to realise is, indeed, Rimmer’s and leaning against the hot water pipe that sits between him and Rimmer - only, he tells himself, it is not a hot water pipe in a foam covering. It is warm because it is a body, living and breathing and tactile, and it is soft with muscle and solid with bone. He is leaning on the only other human being in existence: a human with exhaustion-mussed hair, who is keeping an eye on their children, and who is, perhaps, the person in all of time and space and dimension together whom Lister loves most of all.

“You cannot sleep like that,” that human is telling him. It sounds like he is smiling; his voice is close enough to Lister’s ear that his lips, if turned just so, might brush his cheek. “You will _destroy_ your spine. And it cannot be comfortable; I defy any sensible person to actually sleep like that.”

Lister shifts slightly, pressing into Rimmer’s warmth, and the corner of his mouth ticks up a little. _Wanna bet?_ his conscious mind manages, and then all is warmth and comfort and blessed, star-lit quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: sevensilvermagpies has done [BEAUTIFUL art](https://silvermagpies.tumblr.com/post/642047979556110336/doctors-star-wrote-a-p2-seeing-stars-so) to accompany this. personally, i'm going to be looking at it and crying for at least a week.


End file.
